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Bad blood over House Libya hearing Wed.

A congressional hearing into the Sept. 11 killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans has quickly turned into a partisan yelling match less than a month before Election Day.

Each party is accusing the other of bad faith leading up to Wednesday’s hearing, called by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to review security issues surrounding the Benghazi consulate where Stevens and the other Americans died.

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Issa chairs the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and he led the contempt drive against Attorney General Eric Holder over the failed Fast and Furious “gun walking” program despite bitter objections from Democrats and the White House.

The Libya attack and its aftermath has turned into a key election-year topic for Republicans. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has accused President Barack Obama of mishandling the Libya incident, pointing to initial statements from administration officials blaming the attack on outrage over an anti-Muslim video rather than terrorist groups.

The White House has since acknowledged the attack was probably conducted by terrorists.

“No, as the administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others,” Romney said in a speech on Monday.

Issa’s panel will hear testimony from three State Department officials involved with security procedure at U.S. diplomatic facilities, including Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy.

Lt. Colonel Andrew Wood of the Utah National Guard will also testify. Wood told ABC News that Stevens wanted a team of 16 Special Forces soldiers to stay with him in Libya past the scheduled end of their deployment date in August, but that the request was turned down by the State Deptartment. State has said it never received a request to extend that deadline and had other security teams in place to protect Stevens and other U.S. diplomats.

State Department officials held a classified briefing for House staffers from five committees on Tuesday regarding the Benghazi attack, according to congressional sources. The staffers came from the Appropriations, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

Issa’s committee was initially left off the invite list for the briefing, the congressional sources said.

But Issa did attend the session after speaking with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday and being told he could participate. Issa sharply questioned the State Department officials during the closed-door session, Hill sources said.

“Chairman Issa spoke on the phone with Secretary Clinton yesterday. Secretary Clinton told Chairman Issa about the briefing State officials would be giving today and said he was welcome to attend,” said Frederick Hill, Issa’s spokesman.

Readers' Comments (41)

another disgusting ploy by the party that brought us 9/11, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, hidden wars worldwide, the Patriot Act, created the largest bureaucracy in history and works actively to destroy the US Constitution.

This week in Washington, the United States is hosting an international conference obliquely titled "Expert Meeting on Implementing the U.N. Human Rights Resolution 16/18." The impenetrable title conceals the disturbing agenda: to establish international standards for, among other things, criminalizing "in.tolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief." The unstated enemy of religion in this conference is free speech, and the Obama administration is facilitating efforts by Muslim countries to "deter" some speech in the name of human rights…………. This year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton invited nations to come to implement the resolution and "to build those muscles" needed "….

The "disgusting ploy" was blaming what happened on a stupid and other wise unknown video as an effort to target free speech, knowing full well that had nothing to do with. Turns out Mitt was right for a change and the NY Times and the President owe him an apology.

Everything is an opportunity to shout down the other side with this administration and it's reckless followers.

the coverup of the shooting of ambassador stevens and three other americans must not go unpunished.

this administration was informed of the danger to the embassy ,requests were made for marines to protect the embassy more than one time but these idiots ignore it.

were they incompetent? were they trying to project a false sense of security in the area,what ever their motives , good men died and they must be held accountable , is obama and hilary copplicit in these muders,

can a case of negiience or homicide be brought against these two?

lives have been lost and the ambassador could have been alive today.

i hope romney wins and the justice department go after these two incompetent for murder.

According to the White House website, there’s been no full-fledged “face the nation”-style televised press briefing in more than two weeks. How come? Can’t be that Carney’s busy with campaign stuff. As surreal as it may sound, he technically works for you and me as an employee of the executive branch, not for Team Hopenchange. Why isn’t our press secretary out in front fielding questions about the day’s news? Could it be because … he ended up becoming the public face of the White House clusterfark over Benghazi? And now, after two more weeks of evidence about how negligent the State Department was in failing to protect Chris Stevens, the administration’s less inclined than ever to send him back out there in front of a camera?

The House is too busy (vacationing) to debate JOBS bills and too cowardly to debate the SEQUESTER issue but they have plenty of time for this bogus crap. Issa's an embarrassment and with this continued game-playing he's making the voters of his district an embarrassment as well.

The Constitution, so despised by the right wing and their drooling masses does not mention "press conferences"...sorry. I assume you have forgiven the Bush Cheney crowd for lying to the world so they could destroy an entire nation, or the neglect they DELIBERATELY chose to do when they were warned, over 52 times about pending terror attacks and allowed 9/11 to happen. The GOP has gone off the deep end, and cannot defend itself by lying, so they search for issues...tiresome, to say the least. Why do you people hate America and its Constitution? It gives you the freedoms you hate.

At some point Hillary Clinton will have to dissassociate from the Obama Chicago slime machine. Despite her (and husband Bill's) fake loyalty to Obama and their own hit squads of the past, it's hard to image either Clinton's continuing to go with the vile flow of the Obama machine.

I have to hope they actually love America more than they love the power.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK October 8, 2012, 7:18 p.m. ET Romney's World A contrast with Obama on the benefits of U.S. global leadership.

Following his boffo debate on domestic affairs, Mitt Romney turned to foreign policy Monday in a major speech at the Virginia Military Institute. "America's security and the cause of freedom," he said, "cannot afford four more years like the last four years."

The speech is an important moment as a window on Mr. Romney's principles and instincts as Commander in Chief. Within half an hour of delivery, President Obama's surrogates were portraying the Republican as erratic, uninformed and dangerous—supposedly George W. Bush with better diction. Yet the man who took the VMI stage came off as serious, pragmatic and cautious, possibly to a fault.

His broad strokes offered a welcome contrast to Mr. Obama's view that America must defer to other nations to win global favor. Mr. Romney recognized the electorate's understandable war fatigue, but he still made a case for the world's only superpower to reassert its leadership, most of all in the Middle East.

A Romney Administration wouldn't "lead from behind" or defer to the United Nations. "If America does not lead, others will—others who do not share our interests and our values—and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us," the candidate said.

Mr. Romney placed his criticism of the Administration's response to the attacks in Libya and elsewhere last month in this larger context. He stepped above the daily sniping over who knew what when and brought up the larger conflict. Contrary to the initial White House denials, Islamist terrorists burned down the consulate in Benghazi, killing the American Ambassador. This is part of a struggle started on 9/11 "between liberty and tyranny, justice and oppression, hope and despair," Mr. Romney said.

President Obama deserves credit for killing Osama bin Laden, but the Republican challenger is right to say that doesn't amount to a successful foreign policy. In the Middle East, as well as in Europe and Asia, current policy has been passive and ad hoc. Al Qaeda is far from dead, contrary to Obama spin. And the President's campaign pitch that the "tide of war is receding" is either naïve or politically calculated, or both.

The boys in Chicago will keep saying that Mr. Obama has "strengthened our alliances and restored our standing." But come again? Ask Israel, Poland or Saudi Arabia how confident they are of America's friendship and resolve these days. The fires across the Middle East, from Libya to Syria to Iran, rage in a vacuum created by the perception that the U.S. is withdrawing from the region. Weakness emboldens adversaries, as Mr. Romney put it, whether Russia's Vladimir Putin, violent Arab Islamists or Iran's mullah

Mr. Romney's words were bolder than his proposals. He scored President Obama for abandoning the Syrians in their bloody 20-month struggle against Bashar al-Assad, who wasn't abandoned by his friends in Tehran and Moscow. The Turks and Saudis, who want to topple Assad, won't act without American buy-in.

Yet Mr. Romney promised only to work "through our international partners" to arm the Syrian opposition, which is not much more than the Obama Administration is doing. Mr. Romney might have called for direct American arms supplies or a possible no-fly zone or humanitarian corridors. He wants to avoid any suggestion of overseas adventures, but here was an opportunity to strike a substantive contrast with Mr. Obama.

On Iran, Mr. Romney recognized the aspirations of the country's people for self-determination and their hatred for a repressive theocratic regime—in contrast to Mr. Obama's shameful refusal to support Iran's democratic movement in 2009.

On Iran's nuclear drive, Mr. Romney said he would boost the U.S. Navy presence in the Persian Gulf and strengthen economic sanctions, which Mr. Obama tried to water down in Congress before taking credit for them. But Mr. Romney notably did not repeat his July proposal that Iran must give up its demand to enrich uranium. The U.S. and Europe have wasted years looking for a diplomatic agreement to let the mullahs "enrich" peacefully. It'd be nice if the GOP candidate had taken this option off the table.

Mr. Obama and Vice President Biden have tried to use Mr. Romney's critique of their "run for the exits" strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan to portray him as a war monger. Among the better lines in the Romney speech was his rebuttal: "The route to war—and to potential attacks here at home—is a politically timed retreat that abandons the Afghan people to the same extremists who ravaged their country and used it to launch the attacks of 9/11." The details of his Afghan policy are vague, but count the disavowal of hasty drawdowns as an improvement.

In advocating a robust role for the U.S. overseas, Mr. Romney is placing himself in a long bipartisan tradition from Truman to Bush, while comparing Mr. Obama to Jimmy Carter in Presidential weakness. Foreign policy won't decide this election, but voters should be pleased that the Republican has forcefully made a case for renewed American leadership in the world.

The Constitution, so despised by the right wing and their drooling masses does not mention "press conferences"...sorry. I assume you have forgiven the Bush Cheney crowd for lying to the world so they could destroy an entire nation, or the neglect they DELIBERATELY chose to do when they were warned, over 52 times about pending terror attacks and allowed 9/11 to happen. The GOP has gone off the deep end, and cannot defend itself by lying, so they search for iss

*WINNER BRAINDEAD SCUMBAG OF THE YEAR REWARD GOES TO SKARELIG.*

The last president did bad things so it doesnt matter if the current regime gets a few of our people

killed and then lies about it acording the liberal lune troll SKARELING.